Sunday, 17 June 2012

I noticed that this video at Kotaku about a character dying in hardcore mode in Diablo 3 at level 60 had 516 comments, and thought 'Wow. That must be some pretty insightful discussion about permadeath and the consequences of failure'.

No.

It's one guy asking 'hey, do you lose your character permanently in Diablo 3?' and 515 people giving him the same two sentence explanation of what hardcore mode is.

You can read the featured comments below the article. I'm guessing these are the ones that have been modded up as being the most intelligent variations of the same answer.

Well I guess I get it now, after watching both of those links. I was stuck on the fact that the game was obviously not created with permadeath in mind. Far too long and repetitive for that.

I see now how upping the stakes can make it very interesting. Like throwing dice. Who cares if they come up 7 or 11? Put some stakes (money) on it, and it's VERY interesting. :-)

BTW watching that guy lose his character was brutal. If you ever grinded up a character in Diablo or WoW you can sympathize. It's a ton of time invested and you develop that RPGesque bond with your character. The character is you, and you are dead!